


Springtime (Year 2)

by SnowStormSkies



Category: Adam Lambert (Musician), Ashley Dzerigian (Musician), Sauli Koskinen RPF, Sutan Amrull RPF, Tokio Hotel, Tommy Ratliff (Musician)
Genre: Alternative Lifestyles, American Revolution, Beards, Beards (Facial Hair), Cabin Fic, Chores, Cooking, Domestic, Domestic Bliss, Domestic Fluff, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, F/M, Facial Shaving, Fishing, Geographical Inaccuracies, Geographical Isolation, Girls with Guns, Het and Slash, Homesteading, Hunters & Hunting, Indian Character, Isolation, Living Together, Loving Dean, M/M, Montana Wants to Secede from the Union, Quiet, Romance, Secede from the Union, Self-Reflection, Serenity - Freeform, Shaving, Survival, Trope Bingo Round 6, Twins, Vignette, communal living, montana, survivalism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-05
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-07-12 10:50:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7099801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnowStormSkies/pseuds/SnowStormSkies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Tropes Bingo - Spanking, AU: Gender Norms, Crossover, Unrequited Love/Pining, AU: Apocalypse</p><p>In November 2015, both bands were riding high with success, and interested in only pushing further. Neither band were aware of the other, and had no idea they'd meet while staying in a hotel in the middle of the forest. They were on the way to more shows, interviews: the life of rock stars and pop stars, musicians and singers. </p><p>Nobody expected to be caught up in the midst of a separatist movement, the Militia of the North taking the state and putting into lock down. They fled, refugees of the war in the middle of a cold and snowy Montana winter, and found a cabin in the woods to be their refuge. Eighteen months on, not much has changed. Montana is still in the midst of the civil war, the separatist militia hunkering down for the long haul and the American US holding the borders. In the mountain wilderness, the war is strangely distant, on the shortwave radio as a bad story, nightmares beyond their control, but the day to day still has to happen. </p><p>These five vignettes describe just one day in the lives of all twelve, from morning to evening.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [casey270](https://archiveofourown.org/users/casey270/gifts).



“Chin up.”

“Are you almost finished?”

“Nearly.” Not by a long shot, but if it keeps Tommy Joe quiet, Sutan will say anything. It’s been hard enough getting him pinned down long enough to actually start the process.

Of shaving, that is.

Ria drops off another bowl of clean water from the kitchen as she collects their mugs, followed everywhere by a gaggle of clucking chickens that she calls "chickadee" and tells them they're pretty girls. Sutan grins at her as she walks away, twirling as the breeze catches her dress and nearly gives her a Marilyn Moment. She's wearing the dress today - the one he finished last night after working on it for over three weeks; its made from some of the old sheets that were too small for the beds that they'd stolen from the hotel all those months ago. It looks very springlike, pale green cotton with blue sprigs, cap sleeves, mid thigh, goes really well with canvas trainers laced with tartan ribbons. Nothing like what he used to make - there's a startling lack of sequins, feathers, glitter, or 'fabulous deviations'. However, it makes a change from the winter uniform of thick checkered shirts, undershirts, thick jeans or military surplus combat trousers, and for that, Sutan is grateful. 

Under his fingers, Tommy shifts restlessly, and Sutan returns to his work. It’s the first shave of the season so he had better keep it together. Spring has officially arrived, with beautiful wildflowers in the garden around the cabin, sown only by the wind and some luck. The sun is bright, the breeze brisk but consistently warm, and it ruffles Sutan’s hair as it goes by.

“Almost there.”

Tommy is the third person Sutan’s shaved today, the third unlucky soul to be caught between chores when Sutan had a sharp razor and an empty chair outside. This is also the third time that the spring shearing season has come around - its their third spring in the cabin, and by November, it'll be three years since they arrived at the cabin as scared, cold, strangers.

“Who’s left on your list to shear?”

“I did Gustav and Sauli last night, and Bill too, and Georg and Adam this morning, so I guess its just Tom.”

“Oh. How’s that going?”

“It’s a work in progress.” Tommy snorts, and Sutan tuts at him. “Don’t move your head unless you want me to nick something important, baby.”

“You’re too good for that.”

“Of course I am.”

This is, of course, his specialty - something he takes pride in. Shaving the boys - the _men,_ really, since nobody here is under the age of twenty - with a straight razor and foam, hot towels and a badger hair brush to boot: the works. It's _his_ job, his way of giving back. Most of his contributions to the cabin are small, easy to miss - he sews, he knits, he crochets, he gardens but sometimes, he feels like he misses his old life of helping to make people look different, look _better._ His make up kits are gone now, and he's got no access to a clothing store but he has a straight razor, and a brush, and some scissors to cut hair as well, so at least he can still do some of it. And, you know. Being in the woods, far away from society is still no excuse for split ends or a shoddy windblown goat look.

Tommy settles again, content to let Sutan move him around to get the best angle on his cheeks and down the side of his neck because Tommy’s beard is always determined to meet up with his chest hair. The blonde, curly face fuzz that Tommy's been cultivating for two months falls away without a fight under the sharp blade of the razor that Sauli so obligingly sharpened for him this morning. He works in silence, this time. Adam likes Sutan to talk, needs the comfort of someone’s voice to let him relax and let go of the tension in his jaw and face, and Sauli doesn't mind either way, but Tommy hasn’t ever needed that.

Not even when they were in LA.

He’s nice and quiet, compliant in the best way.

Bill is, too, willing to let Sutan move him however he pleases for the best shave but he lets Sutan do it regularly, twice a week. He doesn’t like a beard, really, prefers something just a few steps above five o’clock shadow, so Sutan takes care of him every Monday and Thursday. Georg and Gustav are the same, regular as clockwork when they want to shave - two or three days tops of stubble before they find him and ask for the razor. Adam is the same, but Sauli likes a bit more fuzz, so he comes whenever Adam’s bitching gets to be too much for him.

Tommy is a once in a blue moon shaver. Mostly, it’s whenever Ashley gets fed up with the beard and she makes him go to Sutan. It might be on Tommy’s face, but it’s definitely _her_ beard. It’s more than a little amusing to Sutan, but it works for them. Tommy’s not that attached to his facial hair, and Sutan suspects he mostly lets Ashley decide what to do with it because she’s the one who has a love hate relationship with the beard burn, and Tommy just wants to keep her happy. Inner thigh beard burn isn’t pleasant, after all.

Sutan finishes the last stroke, squaring off the small sideburns Tommy likes so much, making sure that he didn’t miss a streak with his finger tips. He never does, but it doesn’t hurt to make sure. One last wipe over with a clean washcloth and Tommy’s done.

“All ready for spring!” A full shave takes maybe twenty minutes or so, if it's done properly, but it's made all the difference for him. With the haircut he got on Saturday, Tommy Joe looks like a new man - ready to face the day, and get on with building the extra bench that Gustav's been bitching about for the last five weeks.

“Thanks.”

“Welcome.” With a slap to his backside and a kiss on his forehead, Tommy’s sent on his way again - no doubt to find Ashley inside and show her the delights of a fresh, barefaced kiss - and Sutan is left looking for his lost little lamb.

Tom.

And he definitely is the little lost lamb of the group. Tom is the man who has been avoiding him all fucking day, so he knows that it’s coming - he's _avoiding_ the razor. Usually, Tom can be found sitting outside the cabin in the sunshine, sharpening his axe or working on the harness for the sled, rubbing linseed oil into it to prevent cracking or weathering. Sometimes, he's chopping more wood with Tommy, deep in the forest, or rotating the woodshed stock so the wood doesn't too wet or split. If the wind is up or it’s raining, he’ll be inside, writing in his journal, sanding something pretty for Ria or Bill, or drawing, smudged charcoal on his fingers and a smear of it on his face.

But today, he’s been curiously absent for the whole day.

“Finished?” Gustav leans out the door of the cabin, his apron on and a wooden spoon in hand. Dinner prep is underway then, even though it’s barely an hour since they had lunch. It never stops in the kitchen, almost before the plates are cleared from the table, the next meal is on the go, Gustav elbow deep in slicing and dicing fresh herbs, kneading dough, or peeling potatoes that Sutan has grown lovingly in the vegetable patch outside.

“Just one left.”

“Tom?”

“How’d you guess?” he replies as he empties the bowl onto the grass beside the side of the cabin.  

“He went fishing.” Gustav shrugs, but Sutan has learnt to read beyond the stoic, impassive front, and he knows the little smirk in his lips, the way Gustav turns to lean further against the doorframe so he gives his full attention to Sutan rather than just a cursory check in.

Tom hates fishing. He can't sit still if someone paid him - he has to be on the move all the time and fishing requires patience, stillness, and stability. It’s his third worst chore, only beaten by digging the latrine trench and being Sutan’s yarn or wool holder during the long winter nights when there’s nothing to do except the chores that nobody enjoys. The only reason he would have gone fishing is to avoid being shorn like the other men.

“He won’t escape.” Busying himself with cleaning the razor, Sutan grins and Gustav continues to look pleasantly amused as he raises an eyebrow at him. It took them a long time to warm up to each other - Gustav's gross sense of humour and prickly nature is not what Sutan usually looks for in his housemates but they've grown to love each other. And you know, Gustav can work miracles in the kitchen. Sutan'll crawl over broken glass for some of that beautiful work. He's got angel hands, that one. 

“How long has Tom avoided you?”

“Since Adam this morning.” First thing after the morning chores were done, Sutan had beckoned Adam over as the first sacrificial lamb of the day, and since then, Tom has been always _somewhere else._

“He likes looking like Jesus.”

“There’s Jesus, there’s hobo lumberjack, and then there’s Tom.” Gustav snorts, but it’s true. “I’ll get him this evening.”

“Of course.” Now that’s the voice of experience; more years than Sutan has ever had with the twins speaking, but he’s learning fast. When those two don’t want to do something, they turn into ghosts, disappearing without a trace until there’s food or a warm bed to crawl into. It's weird and he's never seen anyone do it before - they literally seem to vanish into thin air. However, Sutan is older, wiser, and better looking, and Tom isn’t that clever. Not yet, anyway.

Bill wanders past, his piercings flashing in the sunlight. In his arms are fresh, clean white linens, from the line further up the hill. Laundry day is well underway inside, spring cleaning in full swing as well, along with the regular house chores that Bill has on his list. He got roped into it this morning as they divided up the chores for the dy. Didn’t take much rope, though, since it was either laundry or being Gustav’s kitchen bitch, and Bill has a lot of self preservation instinct. His wooden spoon _hurts_ when Gustav doesn’t agree with how his bitch is slicing or stirring or measuring. Funnily enough, Bill ends up as kitchen bitch an _awful_ lot.

Poor darling.

“How many loads is that?”

“Seven.” Bill sighs, but the grin on his face says he’s not _that_ annoyed about it. “At least I get to be outside.”  

Even so, all Sutan can think is _ouch_ . All the laundry that’s been waiting during the last month, everything that wasn’t an absolute essential, is now waiting for Bill and Sauli, and the beautiful sunshine that May has finally bought them. It’s hard to believe that the snow only finally disappeared two weeks ago. That, plus all the bedding, all the clothes that have been in storage all winter, all the piles and piles of linen that Sutan and he want to turn into new dresses, shirts, skirts, shorts, and picnic blankets that need to be soaked, washed, dried and pressed are waiting for him. It's going to be a long day for Bill.

"Do you want the box to pack away that?" Bill points to the table in the grass, the razor and the mug still waiting for their next victim. "I can help you, if you want, to carry the table."

"Sure. We'll put it inside. Don't want to scare off our errant twin, do we?"

"He won't come back." Bill speaks with the kind of twin authority that really used to rub Adam and Tommy Joe up the wrong way but Sutan can believe it. "He knows you're here and waiting."

"We'll see." Spring has actually sprung now, and Sutan will get his man at some point. Tom just doesn’t know it yet.


	2. AU Gender Norms

“Are they all dry?”

“Ja.” Bill lays his bundle of clean, white sheets down on the table to join the rest of the clean bedding, watching as Sauli carefully measures out the homemade soap for the laundry. Next to it, he has a small dark glass bottle - the lavender oil, hand pressed using the old mangle in the cellar and carefully doled out every Monday, because Monday is laundry day. The next load must be pyjamas, then.

It’s Sauli’s little thing that he started doing during the first spring after they arrived at the cabin. Before that, it was just about getting things clean, dry, and back in the crates every Monday because they were still learning everything, barely had enough time to get through the week’s wash before it was time to start again, but they’ve been doing this for over two years now. There’s been time to learn little tricks and ways to make things special, and how to cope with twelve people’s laundry without running out of time.

Now, what used to take five days, takes _one._ Bill’s proud of that - it takes skill and excellent timing to get it all done. And you know. He doesn’t like spending his whole week elbow deep in wet flannel and dirty panties.

“Fifteen minutes to soak, and then more scrubbing.” Sauli swirls the laundry baton through the water to disperse the oil and soap he just added. “And the girls’ laundry will be ready in an hour.” He nods to the bucket in the corner, the wooden lid propped open to let the bleach fumes escape. The girls’ period pads, then, soaking to release the bloody mess. That’s one thing that gets washed every week, without fail.

Living with women has been a learning curve in every way possible. Two and a half years ago, Bill would have been squeamish about dealing with the results of periods - _men-stru-ation,_ he remembers Sutan teaching him the English word - because before they came here, women dealt with it in secret, and he never really paid much attention to it. He was a boy or a man, and that was not _beneath_ his notice but it certainly did not concern him. Now, he’s used to seeing red stained sheets, the way the women smell different depending on where they are in their cycles, offering up hot pads and back massages when they get cramps and pain. There are four women living with them full time, so it’s been a case of learning everything the hard way. There are no tampons in the forest, and the birth control pills they found in the pharmacy don’t stop the monthly red tide, as they’ve come to call it. Sutan and he spent months in the winter cutting, stuffing, stitching, and washing pads for the women to use during their time of the month, pricking their fingers sore driving needles through the stiff terrycloth and fiddly metal poppers that took forever to sew on properly.

There are no secrets in the cabin, not even biological ones. It’s hard to ignore when they all live, work, bathe, sleep, eat, and love within the same four rooms; their whole cabin is less than half the size one _floor_ of the house Bill used to live in. It’s part of life, now, to take care of such things, and Bill doesn’t think anything of it as he makes a mental note to put the pads in the brightest, sunniest patch tomorrow so the sun can bleach them clean as well. The sun is a free source of disinfectant - can’t afford to waste it.

He checks the pile of laundry on the couch, but it’s already shrunk from the mountain it was this morning after breakfast.  They’re making progress, then. He pulls the first clean, dry sheet out of the bundle on the table. “Let’s put these back on the beds, then." 

The sheets smell wonderful - the fresh smell of outdoors and spring embedded in them after hanging outside all morning in the breeze and the sunshine. It’ll be nice to curl up in these tonight; spring truly has arrived now. Such a change from the last few weeks, when it rained so they had to dry everything inside. The sheets were clean, but they still smelled of cooking and living - nothing like the wonderful smell of outdoors.

The dead of winter hadn’t been too bad - they hung things out when it wasn’t too windy, and the clothes freeze dried in the below zero air - it had miserable to hike up the hill to get it in two feet of snow but it wasn’t too difficult. It was the rains of spring that were the worst part of laundry - the whole cabin looked like a laundrette of the worst kind. Underwear hanging off of antlers on the wall, sheets hung over ropes strung across the rooms and blocking every available doorway, jeans and flannel shirts hanging on folding racks all around the fireplaces to the point that they took all the heat possible out of the air all day. The air inside the cabin was constantly vaguely damp and if it didn’t smell like cooking, it smelled pungently of soap flakes. After weeks of being stuck inside except for essential chores, spring could not have come soon enough.

But today, the sun is out, and Bill and Sauli have been hard at work doing laundry in buckets, the bathtub, scrubbing stains out with the washboard and elbow grease, and soap and sand from the basement and lake respectively. Hopefully by the end of the day, they’ll be through the piles of linen, towels, shirts, dresses, jeans, and underwear, not to mention the gloves and hats.

It doesn’t take long to remake the beds that they stripped this morning with Georg and Adam’s help, taking off the woolen top blankets, the heavy coverlets, and the two layers of sheets underneath to let the mattresses breathe. It’s important to do that - the last thing they want is mould to set in on the bottom of the materials, condensation from the cabin being sealed up all winter leaking into the cotton fibres, or the feathers, or the straw. They even flipped the mattresses as well, turning them over, head to foot reversed, so the contents would resettle, and nobody would end up sleeping in a ditch.

It’s amazing how much work making a bed involves when there’s no lifetime warranties or washing machines, or even a mattress store to go and replace things when they wear out. Throw in that there’s no heaters in winter, no airconditioning in summer, and no non-manual laundry facilities all year around and everything is exponentially harder.

The sprung mattresses that originally came with the place probably didn’t need to be turned and flipped, but the straw and tick mattresses that make up everybody else’s beds definitely need it every month. The sweet smelling grasses stuffed into canvas and hessian mattress covers need regular turning to make sure they don’t get lumpy or start to smell musty and old. It’s not time yet to replace the contents, but it’s coming. Bill’s _not_ looking forward to it. It takes almost 2 weeks to do, gathering enough long grasses and wild hay to fill a full mattress, and laying it over with a feather filled topper. And there are three beds to do like that - a double bed in each bedroom, the murphy bed in the living room, and Sutan’s small double in the corner of the living room that also doubles up as a couch as well. Urgh.

If someone had told him before he came to Montana that he’d be sleeping in a feather topped bed, even sleeping on furs in the depths of winter when it’s so cold it freezes the water in the sink _inside_ the cabin, both Bill, Tom, and Ashley have laughed in their faces. But it’s been absolutely necessary - the bitter cold threads it’s way under wool and cotton, and no hot water bottle can keep them as warm as furs and skins. PETA would have a shitfit about him now, though, he thinks, as he adjust the deer hide rug on the floor next to Ashley’s table, and smoothes the rabbit fur topper on Tom and Ria’s bed. Such was their old life. Their vegetarianism was a long time again, as well - there is no room for a vegetarian in the cabin. Not anymore.

But for now, at least, mattress stuffing isn’t on the to do list, and neither is sewing together more furs to make bedding or rugs, so they both return to the big room, ready to move onto the next job for the day.

Bill sings as he works, an old German folksong he remembers from school. He’s been teaching it to Sauli every Monday, in between lifting buckets of hot water from the stove and scrubbing the dirtiest of shirts and trousers; today, Gustav even joins in from where he’s pounding dough over by the stove to make bread for the week. It’s nice to work today - the sun shines brightly through the open windows, and the breeze whips through the open door, pulling out the cobwebs that have been festering all winter.

It’s a connection to their old lives - the singing, the making music, playing the guitars or Gustav keeping the beats running through his head with wooden spoons or his fists on the thick wood of the table - but it’s also how they’ve bonded. To sing is to share, to play music is to exchange something more than words can convey. It reminds them all of where they came from as well as uniting with each other where they are now, and it helps keep Bill’s voice in practise. He can’t compete with Adam (nobody can - his range is truly _astonishing_ ) but Bill is no slouch in the voice department. He especially likes the folk songs that he once hated as a child - suddenly, they have _meaning,_ he can connect them to the work he does, and the produce around him, or the forest, or the lake, or the mountains.

They’re far from home - far from their old lives of rockstars and popstars and musicians and celebrities but not everything is lost. They might be hunters, and lumberjacks, and fishermen, and house keepers,and gardeners, and farmers, and _refugees in the middle of a war zone,_ and _survivors of a conflict,_ and _unwilling collateral damage of the Montana Barricade,_ and _trapped inside a warzone,_ but it could be worse. It could be so much worse.

The sun shines, and Bill shivers to brush off the dark thoughts that prey at the edge of his mind. There is no need to dwell on such things, Sutan would tell him. They lived through the worst of it, and they’ve flourished and thrived where others have died. Today is a good day.

As he sings, he keeps himself moving, ticking off the list of jobs on the list that they write out every week for each day - Monday through Saturday. Sauli and he take pride in their work; like today, making sure each bed is neatly made with the right blanket and sheet, the feather toppers fluffed and tied back into place. Pink for Sutan’s bed (even though Bill sometimes shares it); green and grey for Adam and Sauli’s, in the living room. Red and black for Ashley and Tommy’s in the front bedroom, yellow and blue for Tom and Ria and Bill’s across the other side. Blue and white for Georg and Helené, seafoam and a faded orange for Gustav and Klara, all neatly made up, with feather pillows and as close to hospital corners as Sauli and Bill can make them.

The bedrooms look neat and tidy, when they’re done, the curtains neatly tied back to let the warm sunshine fall onto bare board walls and fresh linen on the beds, and the colourful rag rugs on the floor. There’s little decoration in the cabin - even after two years here, decorating isn’t a high priority but honestly, after so long, it doesn’t need it. Clean lines of the boards, the glint of the bolts and screws that hold it all together, the beautiful texture of the pine and larch showing the loops and whorls that nature gave them; it looks stunning enough already.

After making the beds, dusting down the rooms to clear them off the ash that the fire sends out into the cabin no matter how well they clean, and putting another load of clothes in to soak, it’s time to sweep. Bill readily takes the broom that Sauli hands him .

He never figured he’d be a homemaker, he thinks, as he sweeps carefully around the fireplace, gathering up the wood scraps that fell when he cleaned out the wood stove this morning, taking the ash outside to the bin where Sutan keeps it. It apparently makes great slug and pest repellent, as well as helping along the compost. But that’s where he’s found himself, as one of those that holds down the fort. When he arrived in the cabin, he was lost, inept at most of the household chores, and it had been a steep learning curve.

Bill had tried it all. He couldn’t hunt, couldn’t take another animal’s life like Ashley, Klara, and Ria, and even the thought of gutting the fish that Georg and Adam fished out of the lake was beyond him. He didn’t want to learn how to skin or how to make leather, and caring for livestock was tolerable, but he was no Ria. The animals adored her - she knew all her chickens by name and the donkeys followed her around like dogs. Sutan taught him to sew and knit, and his work was passable, but he couldn’t find enough of that to make it into _his_ role. Chopping wood gave him blisters and a headache; Tommy and Tom could get through an entire tree by the time he managed even a third of a smaller sapling. Gustav found work for him in the kitchen, but it wasn’t enough to occupy him all day, everyday.

But Sauli had persevered where the others had let him go, taking him under his wing while Bill fretted and worried about feeling useless in the group, and he’d gradually come to learn there was little shame in being the one who did laundry, who swept the hearth every morning, who made sure that the little cabin that they called home was always _warm,_ and _welcoming,_ and _a home._

It takes skill to run a home, especially one that involved twelve people, two donkeys, a bunch of chickens, three dogs and a vegetable garden amongst many other things,  but Bill _had_ it. He understood it. He could automatically hold lists in his head - what was in the laundry, what was running low in the pantry, what did Gustav need from everybody who bought food to the table to make meals for the next couple of weeks, how much wood was in the woodhouse outside. He learnt how to juggle chores so the house had a routine that everybody else could fall into, how to light a fire every morning, how to work twelve people’s needs and wants into something that would please everybody, instead of nobody. He learnt how to peacemake rather than lead, how to make balanced decisions rather than go with gut instinct. And it was something he excelled at. It was nice to have something that wasn’t shared by Tom or the rest of the band, something that he did well. And you know, everything was arranged to how _he_ wanted it. Except the kitchen. That was Gustav’s domain.

Sauli hums along with him, neatly folding towels and blankets into piles on the table that he and Bill cleaned and varnished with linseed oil yesterday, his nose ring flashing in the sun and his tattoos rippling as he stretches and reaches. Bill sings again as he turns, moving the pile of dust, dog hair,  and wood shavings from Tom and Tommy’s nightly projects towards the open door...

  _…..“Die Gedanken sind frei, wer kann sie erraten…”_


	3. Unrequited Love/Pining

The wind whips across the lake. The breeze that was mild and playful up at the cabin is strong and determined now that it has no trees to soften it. It doesn’t chill Adam though; the sun is warm and the sky cloudless. A true spring day.

“We’re doing well today.”

“Not too bad.”

Adam rolls his eyes. It’s a trait of all the Germans, he’s noticed, to be more reserved, less enthusiastic about things, so he knows that _not too bad_ means _pretty impressive._ It’s just their way.

But it’s true; they’ve had a bumper day. After several weeks of mediocre catches at the lake, it seems that spring is bringing the bounty today. They’ve caught four rainbow trout and a few lake trout, too, and earlier this morning, they went up to the river, waded knee deep in the fresh ice-cold runoff from the mountains, and landed a bumper haul of six whitefish and two walleyes.

Gustav’ll be pleased. Fresh fish is a pleasure to eat, no matter how it’s cooked, and their freezer was starting to look a little bare after so long. It’ll be nice, as well, to make a change from deer and rabbit that the girls have been bringing home. There’ll be fish steaks, fish sandwiches, fish soup, and maybe even fish pie if they play their cards right. The variety that they caught means that the dinner table won’t get boring either; walleye has fresh, flaky, thick white flesh, that just melts in the mouth, and trout is perfect for cooking over an open fire, absorbing the woodsmoke to make it smoky and flavourful, served with beautiful new potatoes and mint.

There is nothing that tastes better than food they’ve caught, hunted, trapped, or foraged for themselves, Adam has learnt over the last two years. Nothing beats fish fresh from the lake or the river, or a fresh deer, or apples picked from the trees at the end of the garden. There’s something inherently joyous about it, appeasing some part of him that he didn’t know existed before life in the cabin. It’s hard work - there have been many, many days of sitting on the lake in hot sunshine, baking slowly without reprieve without a breeze, or  cold and damp, and having nothing to show for his efforts except sunburn and dead bait. But there are days - like today - when they’re pulling in the line time and time again, to find a new fish at the end, perfectly sized for two to four people.

“How many more do you think we need?” Georg nods to the mesh bag that dangles in the water.

“Four. Maybe less if they’re big.” Fish are great to eat, but it takes a lot to feed a family of twelve; especially when they’re all physically active and burning calories from dawn till dusk. There’s no subsisting on coffee or skipping meals in Montana.

It’ll kill you or someone else.

Georg nods, recasting his line, and Adam watches him settle into the pose he knows so well - resting elbows on knees, eyes half closed, letting the wind ripple through his hair, as he waits for the bite. Adam’s sat next to Georg in this open canoe at least three days a week for the past two years, and yet, it still surprises him how companionable the silence is between them. There is no need to talk, no need to fill the hours and hours between bites with noise and words. It’s peaceful.

The cabin varies between peaceful and not. When they’re all there, it can be noisy, full of the sounds of cooking, cleaning, chopping wood, the sound of people talking, laughing, singing, making music. It feels lie home, it feels warm and bright, and somewhere that is _theirs_. At night or first thing in the morning, it can be homelike in a different way, companionable silence existing throughout the rooms as people wake up, come to, sit outside in the faint sunshine of the sunrise and wait for the day to begin.

On the water, there is only peace and quiet - six or eight hours of it. It’s the beauty of the lake, too. There’s nothing to do but wait out here; patience is rewarded by the best fish, the biggest bites on the line. Sometimes, they don’t talk for hours, just sit and take in everything. Sometimes, they talk and talk until there’s nothing more to say.

He brushes his fingers along his jaw, still faintly surprised that he doesn’t feel the stubble he had that morning. Sutan had collared them both on their return from the river, shaving them with the straight razor because _it’s spring and that means a shearing, darlings!_ Half an hour in the chair on the grass in front of the cabin between the two of them, and they’d gone from rough, curly beards - Georg’s a warm brown, and Adam’s dark with a red tint - to fresh faced and ten years younger.

He wonders if Sutan has managed to catch Tom yet, or if he’s still wandering around, the last sheep resisting the straight razor.

Adam lowers the metal mesh bag back into the water, letting the fish swim freely in its confines again. The longer they keep the fish alive, the better they’ll taste. When they get to shore, they’ll stun and kill the fish (always the _worst_ part of their job) and pack them into the thermal bags before climbing up the mountain. They learnt the hard way not to kill them straight away. Fishing for pleasure, when he used to toss the fish he caught back into the water, is very different from fishing to eat and survive, when they have to worry about flavour and preventing bacterial growth.

Gustav pounded that into their heads the first time they bought back fish they’d killed as soon as they were caught, leaving them to effectively rot all afternoon until they arrived home. _I can do nothing with spoiled fish! Bring me nothing or bring me fresh fish; rotted fish is worst of all!_ He’d chucked the bags of dead fish back at them and stormed off to make a salad for dinner; nobody had gone to bed very happy that night.

They might bring home the fish but Gustav is the one who cooks it and if he isn’t happy, nobody is.

“Sauli wants to build a smokehouse.” Georg adjusts his line as he speaks, letting the rod hang slack in his fingers. That’s the skill of fishing - setting the line and just waiting for the fish to bite. Adam does the same.

Today, it’s been quiet, but Adam feels like talking. “Yeah?”

“He thinks it’ll be good. We can smoke fish in it as well as meat. Black Bear said he’d come down and help.”

“We could give him eggs. And meat, too, because if the fishing stays this good we’ll have meat to spare.” It’s good to always be aware of what they have that’s tradeworthy; Black Bear and his wife don’t have chickens, so eggs are always in high demand. They hunt and trap, too, but at the cabin, they have four girls who patrol the lines and carry the bows, but in Black Bear’s family, only he hunts. Law of averages and all that. And it wouldn’t be more than a day's work to prepare the meat from an extra deer in exchange for something like building a smokehouse. He might suggest that to the girls this evening, over dinner, see what they think. They’re the ones who have to hunt and kill said dear, so it’s ultimately their choice, but a smokehouse would be a great addition to their little homestead.

“Tommy and Tom could find us some different wood - Sauli said that meat tastes different if you do it with oak to applewood or pine to redwood.”

“Sounds good.” The idea of smoked venison or fish is actually surprisingly tempting - smoky flavours and the salt making everything taste moreish and rich.

Adam wipes his mouth, and Georg chuckles.

Money is meaningless in Montana, now, Adam has come to learn. Paper has little meaning when everybody is focused on just surviving. Food, tools, materials like leather or a knitted sweater for the cold winter months are worth far more. They regularly do trade with Black Bear - mostly for lessons in things, or advice, since they’re all so new at everything even after two years of being self sufficient. Sometimes, they trade with the farm that’s 50 miles south, or leave things with Black Bear to trade with a small group of cabins that are 25 miles further on from their cabin. But it’s rare. Much of what they have, they catch, they hunt, they trap, they fish, they forage, they build themselves.

Big difference from his old life, Adam thinks, when he had a personal shopper and a host of people who made sure food appeared and his house was cleaned, seemingly by magic.

“Do you miss it?” He looks up at Georg, wondering if it’s just him lost in this reverie of how different things used to be compared to how they are now.

“Miss what?”

“Life. You know, before. When we were still… you know... Famous. “

Georg sits back. His face is thoughtful, not offended, and Adam waits. Like he said, the lake taught him patience, and Georg likes to consider his thoughts carefully, especially when he’s not sparring with the twins or with Sutan.

“There are some things things I miss. I miss my family. My mother. My grandparents. I would like to see them again.”

“Mmm.” Adam nods. “I miss my brother. And my parents, too. It feels like forever ago that I saw them in New York.” It had been two weeks after their last meeting that the band had set out to go to Canada by road, cutting up through Montana to get to the Canadian border. They had maybe two hundred miles to go to get to their final destinations, but then war broke out, and the Barricade went up, and all thoughts of trying to get to the border had to be abandoned.

Nobody makes it to the border. You die trying or you don’t try, but there’s no making it to the edge of the Barricade. It makes the Mexican/American border look like a holiday destination.

“I wonder what they did when we didn’t arrive.” Georg sighs, looking over the lake but not actually seeing it as he drifts in ‘what-ifs’. “I wonder if they wanted to come and find us.”

“I hope they didn’t.” Adam shakes his head. Those first few months were so scary, so confusing in terms of how to survive that he wouldn’t wish them on anybody else. Knowing that his family was safe was actually a huge relief - even though they could be a thousand miles apart, Mom and Dad were safe and so was Neil. He’s had a long time to come to terms with that feeling, but he is definitely okay with it now.

Time to move to something a little less intense. “I don’t miss my car. Or LA traffic.”

Georg grins, but it’s wry. “I did in the beginning. I never walked so much until we came here!”

Adam laughs because it’s true. They were all city slickers, used to cars ferrying them around, or tour buses, or limos, or private jets, and only walking on a treadmill for any distance. But since they came here, it’s either on foot or, in the winter, by sled pulled by the dogs or the donkeys. Life has slowed down a lot, he thinks. Time drifts along at walking pace.

“I don’t miss the stress,” he says, emphatic in the quiet of the lake, the waves lapping against the side of their canoe. “I know this isn’t easy, and we still worry, but it’s a lot easier.”

“Mmm.” Georg nods. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that the four of them were also famous people, used to the show business lifestyle in a different way from Adam and Tommy and Sutan and Ashley. Georg and Gustav especially seemed rooted in normalcy. They were much quieter about it, but they knew that world, too.

“I thought I would miss more.”

 

“What do you mean?” Georg offers him the thermos flask. The water in it still as ice cold as it was when it came out of the tap this morning.

 

“There was so much I thought I couldn’t live without. I used to say that I needed my feather bed and my tea and my manager, and I couldn’t live without coffee and Netflix…” He shrugs, gesturing to the wide expanse of the lake all around them. “Now, I don’t have any of that, but I don’t miss any of it.”

“I don’t miss much, too. Maybe music; we used to go to a lot of concerts together, and we always had music in the house. But I like it. Helené and I… we are very good now.” Georg runs a hand through his hair, a sure sign he’s thinking of the woman he loves. It’s not hard to get to know each other in this environment; Adam’s spent ten hours a day sometimes in a small boat in the middle of a lake, and at the cabin, he spends hours just sitting and talking with people. There’s nothing to do _but_ learn others, here.

“Sauli and I are good, too. Closer. It feels like we can be…”

“Honest?”

“Yes. We definitely don’t fight half as much as we used to.” Oh, and how they used to fight. They’d shout and scream and wear themselves out with feelings before apologising. Sometimes days could go by before they actually agreed to apologise. In the cabin, they fight maybe once in a blue moon, and even then, it’s over with before a few hours pass. It’s impossible to be mad for long here. They live and work in such close quarters that being mad would affect everybody else, too.

“Would you go back? If you could?”

“Would you?” Georg shrugs at Adam, his fishing rod still hanging between his fingers. “I love this place now. We’ve been here nearly two and one half years. Our house is a home, now.”

Adam loves that. Not _two ‘na’ half years;_  it was definitely _two und one haff years_ . It takes him straight back to his _Wicked_ days of dorm sharing and coffee culture in Berlin. The twins’ accents are thicker, Tom’s most of all, and Klara’s is very soft, but they all still sound German; Helené sounds French like she left Paris yesterday, and Sauli speaks British English with a twist - nobody sounds the same, nobody sounds like they did before because everybody is starting to sound like each other. Languages are starting to blend together, words being exchanged without a second thought, and there’s less and less need for translation because they’re starting to pick it up together. There are no managers or PR staff reminding them to not drop words or slur like Tommy does so it all runs together and nobody cares. The last two and half years haven’t softened them at all. It’s strange to think about the small things he’s fallen in love with about this place and the people he lives with now - but their words, their language, their accents… It’s all part of home for him.

They go back to sitting in silence again, waiting for the fish to bite, but Adam is still thinking about Georg’s question. _Would he go back now?_ The wind blows again, but this time, it’s not soft. It’s edged with cold, a reminder that while spring is here, the nights are still cold and wintery.

“Shall we head in soon?”

Georg doesn’t speak. He just nods, squinting at the sun, like Adam, to estimate the time. It won’t set for another three or so hours, but they still have to make it back to shore and walk up to the cabin again. Yeah, it’s time to head back.

 

It’s time to head _home._

  



End file.
